Day 32 - A Golden Day On The Golden Pass Train

Hey everyone,

Well today, I come down from the mountains and spend the day hanging out on a train.  But not just any train. The Golden Pass Panoramic Train from Interlaken to Montreux, Switzerland.  This supposedly is one of the most scenic rides in all of Switzerland so I was really excited to be going.  Additionally, I was very excited to be sitting after my little jaunt around the mountainside yesterday.

I don't know why, but this was the best day of the trip for me so far.  It's not that the events were any better than a lot of the others, but for some reason I was just really happy today.  Don't get me wrong, I've been happy the whole trip, but this was one of those "can't wipe the grin off your face" times.  Really awesome.  It was just me, a little OAR on the MP3 player, and some of the prettiest mountain scenery I've ever seen.  Perfect.

Before this moment of locomotive bliss, however, I had a couple of hours to kill.  So I spent it wandering around the most expensive city I've ever been to: Interlaken.

Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful town, but when  a plate of spaghetti costs $25 (and I looked around for something cheaper believe me) it's not ridiculous to assume you might be a bit too proud of your product.  Still, there's no doubt it's got a couple of things going for it.

After a few hours, it was time to hit the train.  The trip was broken into two parts.  The first part was from Interlaken to this town called Zweisimmen, which was the first couple of shots here.  The last part to Montreux was where they make there money though.  Apologies for the glare.  These were panoramic trains, but they still had windows so I had to do the best I could.

I'm really struggling with how to make a smarta-- comment about mountains, so for this post (and just this one I promise) I will forgo trying to futilely entertain you while I show you pictures.  Enjoy the break and the scenery.

So this was the highlight of the day and the trip so far.  This was just before we arrived in Montreux, which is on Lake Geneva.  This picture doesn't even come close to doing the moment justice, but it was kind of cloudy and dusk was approaching, and you could see the city on the bank of the lake in the foreground and the mountains behind it.  Then out of nowhere comes that "Light from Above" sun beam in the middle of the shot.  Such a beautiful and peaceful moment.  I think this is what I want Heaven to look like.

So after we arrived in Montreux, I hopped another train to head for the Provence region of South France.

Here's a brief taste of what's to come over the next several days.  This is a shot leaving Monteux and heading to Geneva.  Time to leave the cold behind and start experiencing a little bit of the Mediterranean.

Day 31 - Down The Mountain, Up The Mountain. Result: Same Spot I Started. Smart.

Hey Team,

So today I decided to try out my my mountain man skills and do a bit of hiking.  I had planned on doing all of this by myself, but as I said, I ran into three guys at the hostel and we decided to do the morning hike together.  They were catching a train out of town in the afternoon so from there I would head back to Gimmelwald solo.  I hadn't really hung out with any guys for an extended period of time on the trip so it was a nice change of pace for me.  Our path was basically the reverse of how I got to Gimmelwald except there would be no lifts or buses.  We would hike it.

The day was split into thirds essentially.  First part was a 2000 foot hike down to a town called Stechelberg, followed by a nice little walk on the valley floor to Lauterbrunnen where I would leave the other guys, and then a nice strong finish up 2000 feet to a town called Murren at which point I would take a lift back to Gimmelwald.

So here was the first thing that I saw as I walked out of the hostel.  It's a tough life, but I'm willing to sacrifice so you don't have to go through what is obviously nothing less than pure hell over here.

I think I take back what I said yesterday about the Christmas Card.  We may have a new name on the leaderboard here.

So we started our decent down the mountain.  Here's what I was wearing:  blue jeans, my jacket and fleece, and a pair of walking shoes.  Now this was perfectly adequate for what I was doing, but it turns out it was a bit icy in spots and the grade on this decline was not exactly a nice leisurely stroll.  So what I thought was going to be the easier part of the hike turned out to be one of the hardest parts.  Going back up was more exhausting, but this part was a bit more hazardous due to that whole gravity thing threatening to send me face first onto a step a few feet below me.  Glad to say that after a good hour to an hour and a half, we made it down the mountain.  I'm doubly happy to report that I made it through without incident and we were rewarded with this amazing view of the valley floor. That's Stechelburg in the foreground.

After we made it down, the easy part of the trip started, which was a 2 hour walk along the valley floor to the next town of Lauterbrunnen.  This is just another beautiful shot of the mountain range.

Hallelujah!! Flat Ground!!

The next three are just more pretty shots of our walk including a waterfall that's over a quarter mile high.

After about two hours, we made it to Lauterbrunnen where we rewarded ourselves with nutella and raspberry jam sandwiches, paprika flavored potato chips (not bad actually), and cold crisp water that the city pumps out continuously from the mountain springs.

Here's a shot of my 3 new buds and me from Left to Right:

Josh, Eric, me, and Greg

Learned a lot from these guys about hiking and climbing while we were going, not to mention just enjoyed hanging out.  Had a blast fellas and really enjoyed the day.  All the best going forward.

At this point, we parted ways and I began my ascent back up.  I was a little fatigued but I really wanted to do this part so I headed back to the mountain.  Worked out fine in the end but it was definitely a work out.  For about an hour and a half or more this was my view.

If you see my pictures from the day, there will be several like this.  Why?  Well, I had to justify stopping somehow.  I'd see a tree stump and say, "That looks important.  I probably should take a picture."  This happened ever 45 seconds or so.

I'm sure you've noticed, but the photos are alternating between snow and this.  It never snowed while I was there, but the higher up we went, the more likely we were to see the white stuff that had fallen previous to my arrival.  This was obviously lower to the valley.

So after an hour or so, I came to a clearing on the mountain and got to see this.  That's the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau from yesterday.  Beautiful.  I found a nice rock and just enjoyed the views for about 10 minutes.  One of the best moments of the day for sure.

Here's a detail shot of a glacier that's on the Jungfrau. You can tell it's a glacier by the bluish tint that the ice has.  I don't know if you can see it here, but most of the peaks have a couple of these hanging out near the top.

So once I got to the clearing, I was under the impression that I was finishing up.  Oh how wrong I was.  Turns out the hardest part was coming up.  The first leg was going up but at least there was no snow and ice.  This part was basically the same thing but with the white stuff.  Don't get me wrong it was beautiful (as you can see), but it was a little slower going as I had to watch my footing.

This was what the path looked like.  Thankfully the snow was there because it was much easier to get my footing as opposed to the bare rock which was icy.  When I finished, I was never so glad to see concrete in my life.

I made it from the valley to Murren in about 2:15 which was not bad I thought.  For people who hike on a regular basis this probably was not too intense of a day, but considering I don't need all my fingers to count the number of times I've seen snow, combined with my propensity to spontaneously fall down, I was happy with the effort.

The scenery was absolutely gorgeous and I had a great day on the mountainside.  Very rewarding part of the trip and now I can say I've hiked in the Alps.  After 5 or 6 hours of doing this, it's safe to say I slept fairly well that night.

Tomorrow I take a scenic train from Interlaken to a little town called Montreaux on the East Bank of Lake Geneva.  See you then. . .

Day 30 - The Alps - They Were OK, If You Like That Sort Of Stuff

Greetings from Switzerland Everyone,

Time to switch things up a bit as I leave the cities and towns for the mountains of the Berner Oberland in the Swiss Alps.  I hopped a night train to Zurich from Vienna and then from there to Interlaken, Switzerland.  I'm staying at this very small village up in the Alps called Gimmelwald.  Wait till you see these pictures.  Now to each their own, but you could stay in Interlaken for $250 a night and have a couple of more amenities or you could come up to close to 5,000 feet above sea level and get the views that I had for $25.  You're choice entirely but just so you know, there is only one right answer and it's not the former.

In addition to the beautiful scenery I was in fine form today as I had not one but two Classic Kenny Moments all before noon.  This may be some kind of record, even for me.

So here's a shot on the train from Zurich to Interlaken.  I've said it before, but it bares repeating.  Looking out my train window and seeing this immediately reminds me of home.  Uncanny the similarities that we see here.

So here's Classic Kenny Moment #4.  After the train dropped me off in Interlaken, I had to take another train, a bus, and then a lift to get up to Gimmelwald.  This is the bus portion of the ride.  If you'll remember from the Day 0 post, I have a very heavy bag and a small day pack that goes everywhere with me.  Obviously these aren't just heavy but big as well.  So I always try to get one of them stowed.  I was sitting on the left so I tried to put it over my head.  Well the bin above me was really really small so I naturally looked to the right.  There was tons of room over there so I went that way.  Well, I don't know if it's clear from the picture, but the reason there is so much more space is because there isn't a rack over there, just that red bar that people who aren't sitting hold onto.  Well you can imagine my surprise (as well as the very understanding older man who ended up wearing my day pack on his head) when I put my bag over the bar and let go only to watch it plummet to the ground.  Nothing better than apologizing profusely to someone in a language they don't understand in front of a whole bunch of strangers (he was fine btw).  I quickly went back to my seat and stared out the window for the rest of the bus ride.  Yes everybody, I am your representative to the world.  Rest easy Houston, you're in good hands.

Here's the view from my hostel.  I don't think I would have picked another place to stay in Switzerland.  Years ago, some very savvy locals had Gimmelwald declared an avalanche zone (it's not, but they pulled the right government strings) which effectively killed any plans for somebody from the outside to proceed with any commercial ventures.  Without a doubt, this is the village out of the storybooks folks.

This is a common sight around here.  The Interlaken region and the surrounding mountainside are popular destinations for thrill seekers.  These are paragliders but this is also a popular place to base jump as well.  Unfortunately I didn't get to see anybody doing that.

So a cool story followed by Classic Kenny Moment #5.  I had just  checked in to the Mountain Hostel, and decided I would go up to one of the highest peaks on this range, The Schilthorn (close to 10,000 feet elevation).  Well, I'm not going to hike that, so I planned on going up the lifts.  While I'm waiting, a couple of girls come up to buy tickets as well.  I could tell they were American so I asked them where they were from.  Not only was one of them from Houston, but she works at Methodist, the same hospital I work at!  They were both Dietitians who did their graduate work at Texas Womens' University in Houston.  Unbelievable.  Never seen her before in my life, and I run into her in Gimmelwald, Switzerland.

Well obviously, we were all pretty excited to bump into each other, so we talked right until the lift got there.  Turns out they were leaving to go home, but somehow I had the impression that they were going up the mountain before doing so (they weren't).  Well, we were so busy chatting, that I hopped on the same lift as them completely oblivious to the fact that there is a separate lift for going up and going down. You really want to make sure you are going the direction you want to because, at least on this mountain, there are no rocket packs to shoot you back the right way if you head down the wrong one like I did.  Of course I realized what was happening about 10 seconds after the door closed and the lift started moving.  Thus the most recent hour of my life that I will never get back.  Here's a pictorial representation for all you other future first timers.  On the plus side, we did get to talk for an extra 10 minutes and I will never make that mistake again.  Great meeting you ladies.

So eventually, I made it up the mountain to the Schilthorn.  It was a crystal clear day so I felt good about deciding to do this today.  You could see forever.  Here's some shots from nearly 2 miles up. .

Here's a shot of me in front of the big three peaks:  (from left to right) The Eiger, The Monch, and the Big Momma herself, Jungfrau.  All of these are over 13,000 feet up and the highest point in Europe reachable by train is on the Jungfrau.  You'll be seeing these three a few more times over the next couple of days.

Another shot in a different direction from the panoramic viewing deck.

After that, I came back down and did a bit of hiking around Gimmelwald for a couple of hours.  Here's a couple of shots.

Here's your next Christmas Card.  For a small fee, I'm willing to provide each of you with the rights to use this very professional looking shot.

Lots of brooks and streams and things running through here.  Made the experience even better.











When I went back to the hostel, I ran into three other guys and we decided to do a hike the next day.  Tune in to see how it went.  Later. . .

Day 29 - Living the Good Life, Vienna Style

Hey Team,

Well, it's my last day in Vienna before I take a night train to Switzerland and a couple of mountains tomorrow.      Full day today as I went to a special Mass (see below), followed by a trip to a museum, a battle royale with a hot beverage, and then a couple of hours of cruising around looking at the sights.  Here's the rundown:

It's Sunday, so I went to Mass this morning at the Hofburg Palace (can't seem to get away from here for some reason).  This is the Augustinian Church and a crypt in here holds the hearts of many of the Hapsburg rulers.  Just the hearts though.  The bodies are elsewhere and a few have some other piece of them in another place somewhere in Vienna.  A little pretentious I thought but to each their own I guess.

Anyway, back to the Mass, they had a full choir and orchestra play the music.  Even thought the priest spoke in German, it was the first time I was ever happy that the service went on for over an hour and a half.

Remember the building that I stood in front of yesterday that I didn't know the name of.  Well, turns out I went there today.  It's called the Kunsthistorisches Museum or as I'm going to refer to it because I can't pronounce the other way, "the building that has the pretty pictures".

This is the main staircase.  This easily was the most beautiful museum I've been in since the Louvre.

It's so gorgeous in fact, that I'm going to give you another shot of the entryway.

This is what happens when you're a Centaur and the horse side of your brain wins the battle with the human side and you poop on the kitchen floor.  Very sad.

This was my favorite painting in the museum.  It was done by Raphael (the Turtle with the red bandanna (thanks for the correction Wilson) for those of you who forgot) and it's called Madonna of Belvedere.  Of course, this guy is considered one of the greatest Renaissance painters of all time.  Notice all of the triangles used to construct this image.  Bonus points for whoever finds "Where's Waldo".

Here we go again.  Beautiful girl, tons of personality and the only thing running through my brain is, "If she only had a head".

OK, who can pick out which one is me?  Anyone? I know. . . I couldn't figure it out either, and I took the picture.

BTW, since I blend in so well, this probably means you should start addressing me with a "Hail Caesar" or something like that whenever we hang out.  I am a just ruler though, so no kneeling before me is required.

This is city hall or as it's called here The Rathaus.  I found this highly amusing that the place where all the politicians in town hang out was called the Rat-haus.

The building compares favorably with Marienplatz in Munich even down to the little red flowers hanging off the windows.  I do dig their courthouses here in Central Europe.

And here's a shot of me almost drinking my first full cup of coffee.  This is a cup of Vienna Melange.  I really thought I was going to get it done, but I choked in the final seconds and gave away the easy victory in the end.




So, that's a wrap for Austria.  Tomorrow is Switzerland and the Alps, and maybe even a snowball or two.  Later. . .

Day 27 and 28 - Vienna: So It Turns Out They Do a Bit More Than Make Sausage

Hey Team,

Well the swing back west has begun as I made my way to Austria again.  I'm hopeful that there will be no more driving tickets like last time (mainly because I don't have a car), so hopefully, this visit will be much more pleasant.  As I said on my last post, Day 27 was a scheduled day of rest.  I hadn't really had one since Paris, so I took the time to get to Vienna and then to catch up on some blogging and administrative stuff regarding the trip.

It's really amazing how much time is spent on this trip setting up hostels, trains, activities, etc.  Good thing I'm not really anal or nit picky about stuff or it could take a really long time.

Well anyway, it was hard taking the day off, because I hated wasting the time, but truthfully I needed a break to recharge the batteries.  So Day 28, I was ready to go full steam.  I had a full day of activities planned and I'm glad to say I hit all of them.  Here's the rundown...

So before I could get started, I had this desire to look at table settings (my passion in life as you all know).

Unfortunately, Crate and Barrel is not big over here so I had to pay 10 euro to go find something suitable to my very refined tastes.

This is at the Hofburg Palace which was the home to the Hapsburg Rulers that we discussed in the Budapest posts.  Vienna was the main seat of their empire and they ruled this area for centuries.

This was all of the silver and plating for the palace.  In all seriousness, even I enjoyed looking at it.

So this is about 5% of the candlesticks that this room showed.  Pretty sure they didn't use all of them at once so it seemed a little overboard, but if there's ever a blackout, we all know where to go

Here's a shot of part of the Hofburg Palace.  Needless to say, this things a little bigger than your average house.

It was impossible to get the whole thing in one shot, so here's a model of the entire complex.  The picture above is that piece in the upper middle.

Here's how much of a snob I've become on this trip.  I took a tour of the rooms where the royalty lived.  I saw this and thought, "That's it?  This is what these people are bringing to the table?  They wouldn't let the serfs live in this place at Versailles."

It is a bit more plain, however, they made up for it in a different part of the palace.  So nobody panic.  Royalty still spends an inordinate amount of the lands they rule's money making sure their 4th personal toilet has a fresco painted on it or something similarly important.

So after the Imperial Apartments, I went to this other museum at the Hofburg, the Treasury.  It has a ton of stuff from the Holy Roman Empire including the crown jewels.  I thought this piece was most interesting though.  The spear to the left is The Holy Lance, which, it is quite possible, could have been the spear used to pierce Jesus' side at Golgotha.  There's no way to prove this definitively and when I read it, I thought, "Yeah right".  But I went and looked it up and they did some extensive studies that indicate it is highly likely that it is a 1st century Roman weapon.  Again, you'll never know, but it's been in the possession of the Holy Roman Empire and now Austria for over a 1000 years, so regardless, it's pretty cool.  What I thought was amazing is that it was just sitting in the corner of this one room.  No fanfare, just hanging out in this glass case.  I would have thought there would have been neon signs and a mime pointing the way or something like that.

Here's where the pretty part of the Palace is.  This is all marble and fine woods and stuff.  It's so white and bright you almost feel like you're walking in a cloud.  They totally redeemed their selves here as I thought this was better than anything I saw at Versailles

This area of the Palace housed the museums of the very similar antique instruments, armory, and Ancient Ephesus artwork.  As you may know, Vienna is the mecca of classical music.  Even before Mozart, Strauss, and Beethoven, traveling minstrels in the Middle Ages would frequent and be patronized by the folks of Vienna.  The music vibe in Vienna was my favorite part of this city (I went to two concerts while I was here).  This is a shot of the composition of instrument of a later Viennese orchestra.

Next was the Armory Museum which had the most impressive display of armor I'd seen on the trip.  This put Invalides in Paris to shame.

You can see from the shot here that torturing horses was a favorite past time in the Middle Ages.

If you remember from close to the beginning of the blog, I showed you a picture of a bunch of armored guys where one of them was way smaller than the others.  Well I found out what that was today.

Apparently in the Middle Ages, instead of buying your kid football gear or a fireman outfit, you had a custom suit of armor made for them.  So if you're looking to one up that Mom at preschool who just won't zip it about how awesome her little Johnny is, buy your munchkin one of these.  That'll shut her up for at least 20 minutes, maybe even 30.

Come on dude.  Seriously?  This is too much even for me and you're talking to someone who was forced to wear an absurdly ridiculous baseball banana cup everyday of his life for about 15 or so years.

What I want to know is who let this guy out of the house looking like this.  He must have had no friends (which honestly, is anyone surprised) because if he did, they would have beat the crap out of him the second he walked into the room.

This was the look on everybody's face when the knight from above showed up (uninvited of course) to their house party ("Ladies. . Hot tub?  Hot Tub. . Ladies?")

Here's a shot of a relief from the Ephesus art exhibit.  Ephesus was in present day Turkey and was the home of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, The Temple of Artemis.  It was a major player in the Ancient World and is the city in Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians.

I want to tell you what building this is, but I honestly don't know.  I always get in trouble for not being in the pictures so I thought, "This looks important.  I'll take one here".

Mozart Statue Alert!!  While born in Salzburt Mozart did a lot of his best stuff here in Vienna.  This is also where he died.  Like I said, they love their musicians here and they know the tourists know it too.  You have to be careful when picking a concert here, because if you don't pay attention, you'll be watching some freshman music major and a couple of his buds in perfumed wigs playing a fifth hand version of the Marriage of Figaro for the low low price of 30 euros.

So here I am on vacation, just minding my own business, when some yahoo starts flapping his gums about tuna sandwiches at this place here in Vienna.  "They famous throughout Europe" and whatnot.  I informed this guy that he shouldn't be so careless with his boasting because he happened to be in the presence of a world famous tuna sandwich artist.  I went over to see what all the fuss was about and it will come as no surprise to all of you who have had the pleasure, nay the honor, of sitting down to a meal of my "Tuna Surprise" that this stuff came in a very distant second.  They tried so hard too, I almost felt bad for them..

So that night, I splurged a little and went to a classical concert at the Hofburg Palace performed by the Wiener Hofburg Orchester (Wien is how you say Vienna in German).  It wasn't my favorite classical music, mainly a lot of waltzes and polkas by Strauss and Mozart, but this is what Vienna is famous for.  I had a great time and really enjoyed the whole show.

Here's the Hofburg Palace at night.  Quite a sight.

This is the full orchestra at the Redoutensaal Room.  Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert, Strauss, and Mozart all performed in this very place.  Very cool.